Wankmeister Cycling Clinic #2: Get lean now!

Wankmeister returned from a trip to Philly a couple of weeks ago, and apparently brought a pretty big chunk of the city back with him. A short weekend spent grazing through menus of cheese steak sandwiches, lasagna, pancakes with bacon and sausage, fresh bagels with cream cheese, spaghetti with meatballs, and repeated plates of double-chocolate cheesecake with whipped cream meant that, like spring, Wanky was busting out all over.

Fortunately, I have extensive experience with cycling nutrition, and am already back on track with the world famous Wankmeister Diet, guaranteed to trim your tummy, firm your thighs, shrink your lovehandles, tighten up the fat curtains on your back, reduce the chub rolls on your neck, and slim your manboobs at least to the point that your nipples don’t noticeably poke beneath your jersey.

But first, a little cycling nutrition lesson…

Weight loss, although confusing to many, is quite simple and is based on some basic laws of both energy and physiology. Once you understand them, you’ll be well on your way to looking like Michael Rasmussen, a/k/a The Chicken.

1. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only go to your stomach and hips.
2. If you ride 20-30 minutes daily, or just one 2.5 hour ride on Sunday, you can eat anything you want.
3. The liver is the organ responsible for the enzyme that processes alcohol. The more liver you eat, the more beer you can drink.
4. As soon as you say the word “diet” to yourself, you will go insane with hunger.
5. Pain is weakness leaving the body. Fat is happiness entering it.
6. The reason most diets fail is because of chocolate and donuts.
7. It takes 3,500 calories to gain one pound, but it takes ten weeks, countless hours on the treadmill, and more misery than you ever thought possible to lose it.
8. Fat people are happy.
9. Skinny people are unhappy.
10. Vegetable, fruit, and lean protein-based diets taste like shit.

Made with real Danish butter!

The cornerstone of your cycling diet

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the Danish butter cookie. Produced in Copenhagen by jolly, matronly cookie-makers, the Danish butter cookie begins life in a 400-gallon tub of melted butter. An equal amount of sugar, a pinch of flour and salt, and voila! The foundation of your diet is ready to go. Conveniently packaged in round tins of 40 cookies each, one tin contains a mere 1,700 calories, of which only 40% are from fat. Before you embark on your Wankmeister Diet, you should have enough butter cookie tins to last for at least ten weeks, calculating at least one tin per day.

To which I reply: “Try this diet for ten weeks. If you haven’t become Rasmussenesque by the end of that time I will take all of your extra butter cookies and eat them myself.”

The least important meal of the day

…is breakfast. Skip it. As soon as you skip breakfast, your metabolism will go through the roof, burning fat so quickly that your significant other will tell you to quit frying up bacon in bed. By 10:00 a.m. your fat stores will have been reduced to almost zero. However, fat is a crucial component in cellular repair and in making those cute Lululemon yoga pants pooch in just the right places, so by 10:30 you’ll need to be seated at Uncle Bill’s Pancake House and ready to replenish your depleted stores. I recommend the banana-walnut pancakes slathered with whipping cream, butter, fresh maple syrup, and bacon.

Focal de-fattening

High-powered lobbyists for the vegetable and fruit industries have long promoted the myth that a varied diet consisting (naturally) of fruits, vegetables, and nuts is a key to effective weight loss. Nothing could be further from the truth. Recent studies in the U.K. have conclusively demonstrated that fast, long-term weight loss only occurs through “focal de-fattening.” In other words, it is only by focusing on one or two food groups that the body can be trained to eliminate unwanted fat.

This means that, in practice, you should choose from one of the following three food groups and consume exclusively that until you’ve reached your weight goal.

An effective, well-maintained Wankmeister Diet should remove fat from problem areas at a rate of about 2-3 pounds every five days. Once you’ve reached your goal, you can expand your diet to include foods from the other two fatburner groups. If you find you’re only losing 1-2 pounds every five days, don’t give up! Hang in there through the tough days and you’ll come out on top. Please email me photos of your results and I’ll post them here.